Fall Speaker Series 2007
Dates & Times TBA unless specified.
FALL SPEAKER SERIES
Robert Stackhouse, Artist, presented in collaboration with TTU Museum.
Gallery Talk, Thursday, September 20 at 7:00pm, TTU Museum.
Dr. Timothy C. Graham, Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies and Associate Professor of History, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
Monday, October 1 at 6:00 PM in Art B-01
How Medieval Manuscripts Were Made
In this 75-minute presentation, Timothy Graham will provide an in-depth, illustrated description and analysis of the process used to produce handwritten books during the European Middle Ages. Beginning with an account of the technique used to prepare parchment from animal skins, Professor Graham will go on to describe how medieval scribes then formed the parchment into quires (the “building blocks” of the manuscript), how they manufactured inks and pigments of various colors, and how scribes and artists interacted in the collaborative labor of producing an illustrated text. He will end with a description of the technique typically used to bind the completed manuscript and will discuss methods of storage, including the chaining of books. Audience members will have the opportunity to handle specimens of parchment prepared from the skins of calf, sheep, and goat.
Tuesday, October 2 at 7 PM in Art B-01
Books of Hours: Bestsellers of the Middle Ages
For three hundred years, from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, Books of Hours were the “bestsellers” of medieval Europe. Produced in the thousands, they were owned not only by kings, queens, and aristocrats but also by members of the emerging middle classes. Designed to enable lay men and women to follow a spiritual regime akin to that of monks and nuns, Books of Hours were also sumptuously decorated and illustrated by some of the West’s most talented artists. These hand-crafted books contain veritable picture galleries on parchment that shimmer with light and color. But how were Books of Hours structured and what is the exact nature of the relationship between their text and their art? In this richly illustrated lecture, Timothy Graham will describe and analyze the various textual components of Books of Hours and offer a key to the appreciation of their artwork.
Amy Gerhauser, Artist, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art, St. Edwards University, Austin.
Artist's Talk, Monday, October 15 at 7:00 PM, in Art B-01.
Michael Ventura, Novelist, Essayist and Cultural Critic, Lubbock.
Public Lecture, Monday, November 12 at 6:00pm in Art B-01.
Michael Henderson, New Media Artist, Assistant Professor of Art, Sam Houston State University.
Public Lecture, Wednesday, November 14 at 5:00pm in Art B-01.
FALL ART HISTORY FACULTY LECTURES (Thursdays in September at 5:00pm in Art B-01)
Thursday, September 6th: BRIAN STEELE, PH.D.
"Magnificent in Her Repentence:"Donatello's Mary Magdalen
Donatello's Mary Magdelen (ca. 1455) embodies the pre-Tridentine concepts when restored virtually and reconsidered within the setting for which the statue almost certainly was designed, thereby explaining why comtemporary viewers found the image to be beautiful while modern ones have thought it to be "repulsive" and "ugly."
Thursday, September 13th: KEVIN CHUA, PH.D.
Zhang Huan in the Ruins of Beijing
Long known for a string of violent, masochistic performance pieces done in the 1990s, Zhang Huan's 12 Square Meters (1993) was one of the most perplexing - as well as challenging. This talk will situate the work within the vast urban transformation of Beijing in 1980s-90s China, and unpack its cultural specificity within the politics of the global spectacle. What were some of the contradictions of the so-called "domestic turn" in contemporary Chinese art of the 1990s, and what might looking closely at one work of art tell us?
Thursday, September 27th: CAROLYN TATE, PH.D.
Maya/Dada: Reflections on the Lifespan of Art Objects
Among the ancient Maya, rituals surround the creation of objects, their use, and their eventual destruction as well. Does the modern European definition of "art" allow for its regular destruction?
Ryla T. and John F. Lott Endowment Sponsored Scholar-in-Residence
Liz Wells, Reader in Photographic Theory, Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth, UK.
Residency September 10th - 14th.
Liz Wells::Landscape & Topography, September 11th at 3:30PM: English 106.
Focusing on the photographic work of five international artists, Kate Mellor, Mark Power, Jem Southam, Ingrid Pollard, Olafur Eliasson, Doris Frohnapfel, Wells considers: "If geography is a discipline that examines relations between modes of human occupance and the natural and constructed spaces that humans appropriate and construct, then landscape serves to focus attention on the visual and visible aspects of those relations."
Liz Wells::Image and Memory, September 12th at 7:00 PM: International Cultural Center of TTU, 601 Indiana Ave
Images do not have memory, suggests Liz Wells. Memory is a human faculty; one of the facilities we bring to the disentangling of images, drawing upon individual experience as well as on wider cultural discourses. Photographs may seem removed from the flow of time, but the effects of photographs, how they work on us as we respond to them, are complex. Liz Wells considers image, memory and identity through reference to critical debates about the status of the photograph and, taking examples from contemporary landscape practices, through discussion of aesthetic strategies and dialogical effects.
Ryla T. and John F. Lott Endowment Sponsored Program
¿Y Qué? Exhibition Panel Discussion. Saturday, October 6, 2007 English Lecture Hall 001, 10:00am - 12:00pm
Harmony Hammond, exhibition curator, with participating artists, David Zamora Casas of San Antonio, Ed Check, Ph.D., of Lubbock, Kristy Perez of San Antonio and Angela Piehl, formerly of Austin and now of Stillwater, OK.
Exhibitions and visiting speakers programs at the School of Art are supported by generous grants from the Helen Jones Foundation and The CH Foundation, both of Lubbock. Additional support comes from Cultural Activities Fees administered through the College of Visual & Performing Arts.